1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in its more general aspect to the field of nanometric component electronics and to the nano-manufacturing field.
In particular the invention relates to a method for realizing a nanometric circuit architecture in a semiconductor device between traditional or standard electronic components.
By standard electronic component, or just standard electronics, reference is made to components such as, for example, diodes, capacitors, MOSFET transistors, or portions thereof, obtained by means of photolithographic techniques, i.e., an electronics whose size depends, in the final analysis, on the photolithographic source wave length.
The invention also relates to a semiconductor device comprising a nanometric circuit architecture.
2. Description of the Related Art
As it is known, in the electronics field, the need to realize circuit configurations with a more and more reduced size is particularly felt.
The interest for a constant circuit structure miniaturization and thickening has nowadays pushed the electronics towards what is defined, in this particular technical field, the nanoera.
The nanoera advent, characterized by the capacity to realize nanometer-scale structures (NLS—nanometer length scale), has also allowed to put the grounds for the development of the so-called hybrid electronics, i.e., a particular field, wherein the “traditional” electronics of silicon technologies meets the nanometric world of molecular components realized via chemical synthesis.
Molecular components generally mean different-functionality molecules being able to perform specific actions, be they both electrical and mechanical.
On this set background, an integrated electronic circuit can be schematically represented as a circuit comprising a nanometric region or portion and a micrometric region or portion interacting therebetween.
The micrometric region is divided in turn in active areas and field, and it generally comprises transistors, capacitors, diodes and addressing devices, logics and standard-electronics memory devices. On the contrary, the nanometric region is intended to comprise the molecular devices housed for example in nanometric circuit architectures.
Despite the achieved results, the electronic component miniaturization to the extent of few tens of nanometers and the realization of circuits of the above-mentioned type has interested most of all the experimental aspect and the problem of the realization thereof on an industrial scale remained substantially unsolved.
This limit is mainly due to the fact that the realization of nanometric circuit architectures or structures within semiconductor device integrated circuits and the connection of these architectures to the device standard electronic components generally requires the use of electronic lithography (e-beam lithography).
Embodiments thereof have been developed by Y. Chen et al. and published in Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 1610 (2003) and in Nanotechnology 14 462 (2003).
These techniques require expensive and complex instruments also characterized by particularly long lithographic etching times and they are thus unconvenient for being used to realize the whole nanometric portion within a semiconductor device integrated circuit.
Methods based on the Multi Spacer Patterning Technology are also known, being improving with respect to the most advanced lithographic techniques in the repetitive nanometric architecture realization. “Strategy in Nano-electronics”—Microelectro Eng.
Nevertheless, the electronic lithography is nowadays essential for realizing the contacts of said nanometric architecture in order to realize the connection to the semiconductor device standard components.
In this case, the circuit portion being involved in the electronic lithography, or however in any other latest-generation lithographic technique, although being more limited, however involves quite relevant realization times for an application on the industrial scale.
Moreover, despite the use of this kind of technologies only for reduced portions within a nanometric region, the problem of finding sufficiently powerful light sources or effective optical systems, capable to industrially operate in the electromagnetic spectrum region of the few tens of nanometers, is still unsolved.
The technical problem underlying this invention is to provide a method for realizing a nanometric circuit architecture in a semiconductor device between traditional electronic components overcoming said drawbacks.